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(Wisdom of the Crowds)2 : 2010 UK Election Prediction with Social Media The article by Franch (2012) describes the influence of wisdom of the crowds on democratic systems. By applying the concept of the wisdom of the crowds on the UK general elections in 2010, the vote share is forecasted. The concept is applied twice: first, by aggregating the political opinion of the audience at the media level, and second, by averaging each prediction at the media level. So, why is wisdom of the crowds interesting in the case of democratic systems? For forecasting the vote share for an election, large, diverse, independent and decentralized samples of voters are required. One possibility to access a large enough sample of voters could be by done by resorting to large, expensive and time-consuming political markets. Using the internet however, offers a much easier way to reach a large, diverse, independent and decentralized sample of voters, implying that the wisdom of the crowds can be exploited to make predictions on political processes. The channels through which access to a large pool of diverse interviewees could be realised, include Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs. An important and essential feature of these applications in respect of the wisdom of the crowds phenomenon, is that it allows its users to freely express their opinions about politics and their political preferences. All of the used channels have scientifically proven predictive powers for election outcomes. Youtube for example was successful in predicting Obama’s victory in 2008, where Obama’s moves triggered many discussions during election time (Shah, 2010, p. 10). Research by Gregory Upton Jr. (2010) states that the number of Facebook contacts one has is correlated with the outcomes of the election, and that Facebook is a good predictor of electoral success. Moreover, Twitter is also a highly influential tool in election processes due to the heavy use by candidates for political discussions (Tumasjan, Sprenger, Sandner & Welpe 2010). Lastly, blogs and online forums are an important indicator for electoral outcomes since scientists have proven that: “buzz on the Web mirrors the real world” (Gloor et al., 2009, p.7), enabling the discovery of important trends by smart algorithms. The findings of this study do not intend to explain political voting, rather it is tried to illustrate how social media can be used to predict election outcomes. This study confirms the findings from previous research that social media are effective predictors for political outcomes as they aggregate public opinions regarding politics and provide reliable measures to indicate political swings. These findings have important consequences. The models that were based on social media tested in this research outperformed all opinion polls, were inexpensive and were able to reach a large audience in a short period of time. Therefore, the polling industry should devote more attention to the predictive power and knowledge of the wisdom of crowds via social media. To conclude, what this paper adds to the example provided in the first paragraph, is that the wisdom of crowds is a valid and better indicator for election outcomes than currently used opinion polls. Therefore, the concept of the wisdom of crowds could be applied not only to predict, but more importantly to influence processes of high social concern, like elections, upon which political strategic processes can be based. Fabio Franch (2013) (Wisdom of the Crowds)2 : 2010 UK Election Prediction with Social Media, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 10:1, 57-71, DOI: 10.1080/19331681.2012.705080